Three things strike me as I read the account by intrepid Hungarian-born nobleman Colonel Agoston Haraszthy, sometimes called the Father of Californian Winemaking, of his visit to Bordeaux, in 1861. The first is the tedium of travel, then. The second is his admiration for the beauty of the city itself: Bordeaux may have spent decades of the 20th century with its port disfigured by abandoned warehouses and its river views obstructed by ill-placed buildings, but in Haraszthy’s time it was still “a very fine city”. The botanic gardens were full of goldfish and white-necked swans and, this naturalised American was delighted to note, “many ships from our own country sweep the harbour with their airy forms”. That’s a city I recognise, although for American sloops I’ll substitute the Cité du Vin, the riverside wine museum that opened in 2016, its airy form designed to resemble a swirling wine glass.
The last is the depressing difference between drinking Bordeaux in its birthplace and elsewhere. Haraszthy warns readers in San Francisco that their city’s $5-a-case Bordeaux is actually no bargain. “No good wine can be sold even [in Bordeaux] at any such price. Where then is the cost of transportation, insurance, interest, and duty, to say nothing of profits?”
Content from our partners
